"Acrobat is evolving software," admits Larry Greybill, AdSEND project manager. "But what we see we like. It's relatively easy to work with -- it allows embedding of fonts and high data compression, so at this point PDF is the best solution."

Still on Greybill's wish list are color management capabilities and the ability to be output directly to film or plate without the format translation.

Greybill may get some of his other wishes in Adobe Acrobat 3.0. Expected next month, 3.0 should make it possible to store all four colors in one PDF file, and carry open pre-press interface (OPI) comments and other imaging data. And, the next generation of Adobe PostScript raster image processors (RIPs) will image PDF files as well as raw PostScript.

Does PDF have legs to become more than an AP standard? Greybill said he's optimistically waiting: "I think Version 3.0 will tell us."

Digiflex
When it comes to massaging ads before they get sent to the newspaper, Digiflex sees itself as a masseuse and the rest of the field as vibrating beds in some cheap motel.

"We're not an electronic FedEx," declares Harry Dahl, senior vice president of this division of Autologic Information International of Thousand Oaks, Calif. "We're trying to automate production flow."

As opposed to the AP "store and forward" method, in which all ads are reduced to the least common denominator of PDF format, stored on a server and transmitted via satellite, Digiflex heavily customizes ads to newspapers' specifications before transmission.

"We don't force the paper into a single format," Dahl said. "We ask the paper, 'What do you want?'"

About half his customers want PostScript files and half want EPS. When left up to the customer, few papers want PDF, Dahl claims.

The customization doesn't stop there. Each ad is delivered cropped and sized exactly, ready to strip into the page. If you're a national advertiser who needs local tags inserted at the bottom of the ad, Digiflex can do that, too.

Naturally, there's no free lunch. "We do charge more" for all the custom work, Dahl said. That can be as much as $75 for a "rush" ad charged to the advertiser, with a fee of perhaps $8 to newspapers.

And being a custom house means you don't flip as many burgers as McDonald's: Where AP may do 40,000 to 50,000 ads a month, Digiflex may handle a thousand.

Television sweeps advertising, which depends on individualized channel numbers and call letters for each station, is a huge part of DigiFlex's business, accounting for up to 5000 ads a month.

B-Linked Inc.
To rolf our massage analogy over the pain threshold, B-Linked said, "Heck, why are you shoving quarters into that vibrating bed? Here's a kit to build your own."

New York-based B-Linked supplies the hardware for about $10,000; you supply a phone or ISDN line, and open your own high-speed bulletin board based on the well-regarded, cross-platform First Class. Advertisers dial up, send their ads, get confirmation and log off.

"AdSEND and the others are middlemen," said Todd Melet, B-Linked's president. "Middlemen cost money and time."

B-Linked's system is the digital equivalent of two cans and a string, and simple may be better in some situations -- if you have a giant advertiser who has a history of producing ads that you don't have to rework, for example.

You also don't have the hassle of converting from PDF as you do with AdSEND. On the other hand, you don't have somebody in New York or Los Angeles to hold your hand and listen while you explain your deadline problems.

Hey! If you're going to drive a stick shift, accept the fact that sometimes you're going to burn up the clutch.

4-Sight L.C.
Taking the B-Linked philosophy a step further is 4-Sight.

This West Des Moines, Iowa, firm (which is allied with CE Software, of QuickKeys and QuickMail fame; they distribute fax products together), is a U.S. beachhead established by 4-Sight International, a fast-growing British telecommunications software company of the same name.

The American 4-Sight, well hidden on the NEXPO floor, has one communications product for sale right now: ISDN Manager, a translation engine for disparate ISDN equipment.

"The problem," said U.S. President Lyndon Stickley, "is that all over Europe, there is a range of different PCs and Macs, and each country has a different flavor of ISDN card."

Before, you had to have the same hardware at each end to get a good ISDN connection -- great if you have standards, a major hassle if you don't. 4-Sight wrote software embedding the communications protocols used by 28 ISDN cards, which means every ISDN modem is able to talk with any other.

To accompany this communications prowess, 4-Sight has written a Quark XPress XTension that sends files from the desktop -- a scary thought for those who value other sets of eyes on a project, a joy to harried artists who just want to zap files out of the office and be done with it.

The same thing has been done with an Adobe Acrobat plug-in, Stickley said.

But the icing on this digital cake will come in September at Seybold San Francisco, claims Stickley, where the company will launch ADS (Artwork Delivery System) in the U.S. market. ADS will attach a header to ads that should be able to tell other computers where the ad belongs on a server or in the innards of a pagination system.

This combination of ad management software and telecommunications muscle may be the first of what becomes serious competition for the "store-and-forward" systems that lately have mesmerized the pre-press world.

Vaporware, it's not. Developed in England by 4-Sight and Associated Newspapers, ADS is used throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, South Africa and Australia.

Stickley claims the "resources" haven't been there to market it in the United States until now. That all will change, he said, this autumn.

Future enhancements could attach some kind of automatic pre-flight check of PostScript before the ad gets out of the building and onto the ISDN line.

Mission Critical Technologies Inc.
Six years ago, Mission Critical rolled out AdFAX, an automated solution to chip away at the mountain of faxed-in classified ads that get dumped on a newspaper every day.

AdFAX intercepts the fax, runs it through optical character recognition software, and ultimately displays the product on a screen for an operator to check before the ad is sent into a standard classified ad system.

But direct transmission from the high-volume advertiser (such as a real estate broker or employment agency) takes the fax out of the picture -- and along with it the inevitable OCR errors that require the operator.

That's the premise behind the Concord, Mass., company's Adfast, the direct entry software used by 200 newspapers, and a couple of new products:

So polish up that bike, buddy.

-- John Bryan

The Associated Press,
(212) 621-1732;
Autologic Information International Inc.,
(805) 498-9611;
B-Linked Inc.,
(212) 532-5083;
4-Sight L.C.,
(515) 221-3000;
Mission Critical Technologies,
(508) 287-0018.

From THE COLE PAPERS, July 1996, Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved.